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Rating:
CASE 1
It's not a good period for you, things are going badly and turning for the worse, you look back, and even the blackest moments of pitch in your past seem at least tending to gray compared to the dark magma you’re wallowing in. Quagmire ahead and behind you.
CASE 2
You are just an ordinary person, probably a guy/teenager in your twenties, childhood is over, and some gloomy thoughts are making their appearance, alongside responsibilities that perhaps you could have easily done without.
CASE 3
You are a Neil Young fan who has lost love and work, and your misfortune forces your will to live to retreat.
In case 1 and 3, this is absolutely the album of the moment.
In case 2, you will feel like jerks because you'll realize you don't have a real reason to be in the pathetic state you are in, so much so that the suspicion that you are confusing boredom with existential malaise depresses you. And at that point, everything is perfect.
The aforementioned is the first solo work of Steve Von Till, voice, guitar, and mind of Neurosis, and it is perhaps the best portrait of the personality and sensitivity of this artist. "Stained Glass" starts, and it's you behind that dirty glass, watching the sleet fall on your melancholy.
A beautiful, deep voice, sorrowful, accompanied by an acoustic guitar and occasionally by a violin. Splendid and dark "We All Fall" that repeats "ashes" at the end. The ashes of death, dark verses sung by that voice do not sound trivial, for once...
There isn’t a moment to lift your head, while obsessive delays outline the placid repetitiveness of sadness that "like snow makes no noise". Just as hope for a change of scene fades, "Warning of a Storm" steps in, eight minutes on the same three notes repeated endlessly, in anticipation of a storm that will never come. Little changes from here on, between the dull tolls of "Midheaven" and the sacredness of "Twice Born". Your suffering will end (if you’ve made it this far) after the interminable ten minutes of "Shadows In Stone", which feels like a desert wind, suffocating and tireless, with some increases in intensity that are hardly noticeable.
The album is all like this, never drums, occasional organ notes, and this voice that desperately accompanies you in your dark corners, on thoughts that are uncomfortable to travel on (as crows fly), that pities you but never offers you even the slightest chance of a sliver of light.
Therefore, it is difficult to determine its real purely musical value, which for many will be close to zero, but give it patience (and your worst moments) and this album will repay you. Guaranteed.
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